


set the night aglow

by Naolin



Category: League of Legends
Genre: F/M, Timey-Wimey, Unplanned Pregnancy, Video Game Mechanics, it's magic i ain't gotta explain shit, more of my usual self indulgent nonsense, some minor stabbings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 17:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16045241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naolin/pseuds/Naolin
Summary: "Please don't bring me cursed artifacts, Ezreal."The Illuminators assign Lux to a watchtower for undetermined months of boredom. Visitors keep her company, some good, and some bad - but at least she has a guardian angel to see her through it.





	set the night aglow

**Author's Note:**

> Me, after furiously googling the history of bathtubs for three days: You know what fuck it. My world just has functioning heated water systems. It's Fantasy Plumbing, don't fucking speak to me, I don't care if it contradicts canon. Anyway, I had this dream, once...

 

 

"Think of it like a vacation," Ezreal says, kicking up his feet onto the coffee table. He sinks back against the deep blue sofa he is lounging on, leaning his head back and giving her a lazy grin.

It looks uncomfortable, Lux thinks. A thin futon on top of a firm wooden frame. It's to be expected of a place like this, and she knows that the both of them are used to far worse. The problem is, Lux is just as used to far worse as she is used to far better.

She remains standing, across the room from him, with her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulder leaning against one of the few walls that is not a floor-to-ceiling window. Blithely, she thinks: it would be ridiculous to expect a watchtower to be specially outfitted for nobility. It won't be like her old bedroom in her parents house, still sitting untouched since she was thirteen. A golden, shimmering, lacy, frilly, and _dusty_ time capsule.

Lux turns to look back out the window. This tower is just East of Terbisia - or, the remains of it. She can see far, far into the distance, in the opposite direction. Away from Demacia, the beautiful green plains sprawl into the distance, until they finally split to make way for a river that widens out into a lake between the scattered Greenfang Mountains.

Craning her head, she can see watchtowers to the North, nearly hidden in those Mountains. To the South, there are more towers spread across Wrenwall.

If an attack does not come from the sea, it will have to pass through between these towers. Lux knows it is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Terbisia never recovered from the attack, but battles have been won on its ashes. Noxus' most recent push for territory was too recent - and too perfectly countered for them to try again so soon.

That is precisely why she does not understand this assignment. The intel that had prepared them for the ambush had come from _her_ , from _her_ squadron's work, from _her_ infiltration. From her _magic -_ not that many knew that last detail.

But the Illuminators knew, and the reward they give her is this? Stuck in a tower like a captive princess, for what is sure to be months of inactivity. Staring down pretty fields of nothing on one side, and the thick walls of her kingdom on the other.

It's nauseating. Lux drops a hand to her upset stomach as if she could soothe it by touch; as if her magic was for healing. Terbisia's ruins are a cold reminder that it is not.

She has been quiet too long, and Ezreal snorts. When she glances his way, he has a knowing look on his face. "Just enjoy the leisure time."

"It isn't leisure, Ezreal," Lux says, refusing to look at him for long. She still sees the vague shape of his reflection in the window standing. "Though it may be _dull_ , this is a mission. I need to remain attentive to my surroundings."

She doesn't have to look to know that he is rolling his eyes. She hears his footsteps cross the tower behind her; the wood creaks ominously beneath them. Lux wonders how sturdy this tower really is.

Ezreal's arms wrap around her waist from behind. With a sigh, he buries his face in her long hair, and his breath warms the back of her neck through it. She laughs despite herself. Ezreal grumbles, sounding sour, "Then pay attention to me."

"You know what I meant," Lux says, but still turns around to face him; his arms go slack to let her.

The blue flare of his magic glowing at his cheeks is dull today. The ripple of its light is as slow and rhythmic as waves on a shore, perhaps on a foggy day. His eyes are much brighter, Lux notes, as he watches her with a furrowed brow and a pout that he would never acknowledge as such.

Maybe it's the proximity to those walls.

Lux rests her fingers at his hips, mirroring his ginger touch. She bows her head, and feels his hair tickle her forehead as he leans in, too.

Then he straightens. With confidence, he tells her, "The worst that's gonna happen is some scouts."

Despite herself, her eyes drift over Ezreal's shoulder, in the direction of the fallen city nearby, as if she could see it through the walls.

He adds, "If they cause any trouble, I'm sure you could subdue them."

Lux winces, not because of the implications, but because Ezreal speaks as if there are none. "That's a gentle way of putting it."

She watches him closely; the realization flickering in his eyes, and the way it's quickly masked with indifference. He shrugs.

His hands press against her sides, inching beneath her blouse, now. His touch is firm and gentle all at once as he squeezes, pulls her closer to him.

"I can stay close. I'll visit," he says. "We're far enough from the walls."

Lux breathes the word, "Please," with exasperation against his lips.

***

The watchtower is spacious, for what it is. It's a round room - hexagonal, if you are nitpicky, and Lux absolutely is - divided up into smaller rooms.

The entrance way is the makeshift living room, with nearly all its walls made of glass to overlook the plains. Inside there is a small, too-thin sofa, a stained and wobbly coffee table, and a bookshelf that is despairingly empty. To the opposite side of the room is a small nook for cooking.

A slice of the tower is sectioned off from inside, and this room hosts an uncomfortably hard bed and yet another worthless bookshelf. Lux wishes someone would have warned her that she was expected to bring the only potential entertainment to be had. She knows that someone is meant to deliver her food on the first of the next month, but even if she requested they bring her something to read, she knows it would not arrive until she was allowed to leave the tower.

Beside the bedroom there is another room; a small bathroom. This is apparently where all the luxuries went, because it hosts a deep, porcelain, claw-foot bathtub with running water. It comes out grey and muddy the first time Lux turns the knobs, and even when it has cleared, only gets lukewarm at best, but she still takes it as salvation.

The job is simple: watch the fields. Signal the other towers if you see a threat. If you are attacked, burn bright in warning.

Lux has memorized the Morse code of lanterns already. Sometimes her heart skips a beat when she sees a flicker in the mountains, only to realize that it is just two other towers in slow-motion conversation with each other, miles and miles apart.

Lux knows how that feels.

She is not in the habit of counting the days of Ezreal's absences. She does not _pine_ like a spoiled child.

She is usually too busy to even miss him. Their lives aren't in alignment.

But in the tower she is _bored_. Absolutely sickeningly _bored_.

The most she sees in a day is the sunrise and the sunset. In between is a haze. Sometimes there is movement near Terbisia, a slow-moving attempt at repairs that does not seem to change the scenery no matter how long they work. Sometimes there are specks as small as dust, traveling by the lake and beyond it. Innocent nomads.

The most thrilling thing to happen in her first month at the tower is a traveling merchant, misguided into thinking Demacia will open its gates for their wares. Lux sees them coming with their cart and bags, and walks half the day just to cut them off, knowing it is unnecessary but so hopelessly bored that it is worth it despite the ache of her feet.

"Do you have books?" Lux asks, storming up to the slowing cart with firm, authoritative steps.

The merchant startles, and against all odds, looks vaguely frightened. She has a soft face, framed by short, dark brown hair that curls around her cheeks. She must be near Lux's own age, hardly twenty. Her brown eyes brighten after just a moment. "I have plenty! Would you like to look?"

Lux spends the afternoon in the merchant's covered wagon, perusing a small stack of books and as discreetly as she can, making note of the rest of her wares. There are no weapons, no magic artifacts - no hidden enchantments that ring out against Lux's own subdued magic like a fond sibling.

Not that Lux knows much about fond siblings.

Mostly there are just medicines, trinkets, and an abundance of art. Paintings from other cities and kingdoms. Scenery Lux has never seen in styles she has never imagined. Sculptures of figures that must hold significance to other cultures.

At the merchant's offer, they eat lunch together, sitting side by side with their legs dangling over the edge of the cart.

It isn't often Lux gets to talk with others her own age. Most members of her squadron are twice her age, and Ezreal - well. Ezreal is an outlier. The edges of their lives only brush shoulders once in a blue moon. Their gravitation is out of sync.

Lux holds a carefully cut sandwich in her hands, remembering the manners ingrained into her as a child. She is starving; her appetite has been unusually large lately.

It takes a moment of debate before being helpful wins out against being polite. As gently as she can, Lux tells her, "You know that Demacia doesn't allow trade like this. Your paintings are - lovely, they are, but they won't let you in to sell them."

The merchant hums in thought, munching at her own sandwich with much less delicacy. "Well," she says brightly, but with her mouthful. "Maybe I could sell stuff right outside the walls?"

Lux tries to give her a polite smile just to humor this stupid idea, but the merchant sees through it, and sighs.

"I just thought maybe - if they saw my paintings, they would change their mind."

She isn't sure how to respond to the naïve sentiment. Beauty from outside those walls can't tear them down. You can't operate on those kinds of leaps of faith, showing people what you're worth in the hopes that they'll give you your first chance. Lux says, "That's not how the world works. I'm sorry."

When they are finished eating, Lux buys just three books, knowing that she still has to return to the tower by foot.

"Here," the merchant says, and takes the books from Lux. She slides them carefully into a hand-woven bag. Then she finds one of her smallest paintings, hardly twenty centimeters wide, and slips it in next. "As thanks for the company," she explains. "Food always tastes better with company."

Lux accepts the bag graciously, with a deep bow.

She watches the merchant lead her horses back around to leave the way she came. As the merchant climbs back up into her seat, Lux is briefly struck with the impulse to ask her about medicine. She has not been taking well to the height of the tower, or perhaps it has been the water.

But her paranoia and self preservation win out against it. She knows nothing of this merchant. Not where she is from, not how trustworthy she is. Not even her name. And so she says her goodbye, waves her off, and begins her long walk back to the tower, where she signals with her lantern to the other towers, where she keeps her eye on the distant speck of the wagon outside her window as it fades into the distance.

***

The one nice thing about the tower and all its windows is that she can see Ezreal coming long before he arrives.

He is staying in the area, but often far out of sight, disappearing into forests and alcoves and caves. So far away that she would not be able to tell him apart from another person anymore than she can tell ants apart.

Lux has never been one to miss him, no. Nor one to dress up before seeing him. They tend to meet when she is traveling, when she is on the road, in travel clothes far nicer than he is used to seeing - but far from the formal wear that Lux is used to from home.

It's nice to have the warning. To see the sparkle and glimmer of his magic and the halo of sunlight catching blond hair, still half a day away.

Lux bathes, then carefully combs her hair. She pins it into a crown braid. She picks her clothes and - well, she would tidy the room if there were anything _to_ tidy. The best she can do for this is hang the merchant's painting on the wall of the bedroom and make sure the bed is tidy enough for two.

She knows that none of these gestures mean anything to him.

She meets Ezreal at the base of the tower, sitting patiently on its steps with her hands beneath her drawn knees.

It isn't so bad, this far from civilization. It's quiet. The distant trees and their sap smell sweet in the air, carried across whispering, swaying fields of overgrown grass. As the sun passes the center of the sky and the day grows warm, the shadow of the tower keeps her cool, along with the breeze that helps to keep her hair from her back.

There is something to the way Ezreal brightens when he sees her. He does not make eyes at her or suddenly break into a smile, but there is a tension to his shoulders and an exhaustion to his brow that vanish in an instant. His lips stay drawn in a scowl, his neutral expression, but it stops reaching his eyes the moment they land on her.

"Rescue me from the beast called Boredom," Lux says, rising, smoothing down her skirt as it tries to billow up in the wind.

"Rescue yourself," Ezreal retorts in feigned annoyance, but catches her and holds her tight when she crashes into him for an embrace.

She tells herself that she is playing a part, when she does this. That they are making fun of noble girls who love so desperately, making fun of the girls in novels.

She had always thought it was a joke that they were telling each other, back and forth, but the way he buries his face in the warmth of her neck makes her think that maybe he is just humoring her. Maybe he is telling her a different joke, about a girl who pretends to be more detached than she is. She pushes the thought from her mind.

Her arms around him bump something solid on his back, beneath the travel bag he keeps slung over one shoulder.

Lux draws back, raising an eyebrow.

"So, okay," Ezreal begins, as if she has caught him red-handed doing something he shouldn't. "Past the Silent Forest? If you keep going East and follow the river all the way through, there are some ruins deep, deep over there."

With one hand on his shoulder, Lux circles around him to take a look.

Strapped to his back, slipped beneath his bag, is a long, leather sword sheath. When Lux makes a tug at it, Ezreal obediently slides his bag down one arm, then pulls the sheath overhead to hand it over to her. As he does, he keeps talking, unbothered. "It's definitely enchanted, just can't tell how? And I can't actually, uh, use a sword, so I thought maybe I could leave it with you until I'm leaving the area. It's probably not cursed. You'll probably be fine?"

Lux takes the sheath in her hands with great skepticism. It's heavier than she expected - the weight of swords compared to a wand always startles her.

"Please don't bring me cursed artifacts, Ezreal," Lux admonishes, but there's no bite behind the words. The sheath is too long for the sword it holds; like it was bought second-hand with no others to choose from. It wouldn't surprise Lux if that were the case.

She slides it down to reveal the hilt of the sword, carefully, as if its magic could trigger at any moment. The hilt of it is bronze the color of clay, forged in a diamond around a blue gem. The blade itself is silver, thin, and shining like new.

"I can't use a sword, either," She points out.

"It's not _for_ you to use," Ezreal huffs. Uninvited, he begins to climb the steps to the tower. He is grinning when he looks back at her over his shoulder. "I'm using you as storage."

Lux mutters a sarcastic, "Thank you," and follows behind him, ignoring his lengthy rambles about eras and spells.

***

Inside the tower, Ezreal curls up on the couch, finishes his lecture, and promptly falls asleep. Lux sighs, but supposes it's impossible to be bothered by her wasted time on her hair and her clothes. It was time she would have just otherwise spent bored, anyway.

She manages to wake him long enough to drag him to the bed, where she leaves him to sleep all day.

Lux wonders how long he had walked. How much magic he had used to rush closer and closer with that gauntlet of his.

She wonders if there is urgency in his heart when he thinks of her.

She shakes her head. Ezreal is not the impatient sort - not when it comes to seeing her. They are on the same page, in this way. Ordinarily, Lux is far too busy to fret over not seeing him for too long. Ordinarily, Ezreal is busy, too.

Outside, the scenery does not change. Terbisia does not rise from the dead like a phoenix from the ashes. Noxus does not attack, like a fire spreading across parchment. Only twilight spreads, gently pushing its way across the plains until it reaches her tower and casts its colors through her windows.

The sky is the color of flames when Ezreal emerges from the bedroom, guiding himself with a hand against the wall until he collapses back onto the couch. He yawns and scrubs at his eyes, still blinking blearily at Lux with his mussed hair and rumpled clothes.

Lux sits beside him, where he falls into her side as if too tired to stay upright. She curls her body towards him and tells herself it is to see outside the window better.

"Anything fun happen?" Ezreal asks, his voice a scratchy mumble.

Lux ponders this for a moment, dragging it out to emphasize that there is little to recall. "A merchant came by, earlier in the month," She says, gesturing to her three books and one painting - the meager evidence that this tower is lived-in. That, and now the sword, leaned against the wall beneath the painting.

"Oh," Ezreal says, drawing back from her, and if Lux did not know him better, she would say he looks guilty. "Do you, uh… I can… I won't be able to get past the walls or anything, but I could go to… Jandelle, I guess? And get you more… Books?"

"That would be nice," Lux says, as mildly as she can, to mask the desperation. She has already read the ones she has four times each, and was not impressed with any of them. "Medicine would be nice, too, if it's not a bother. I've been having a little trouble eating."

"I can go tomorrow and be back quick," Ezreal says, talking a bit too fast. Lux reaches up and touches his cheek, and as he quiets, the blue markings on his cheek flare bright for just a moment, like a stoked fire.

"Don't rush away from me," Lux murmurs. She is instantly embarrassed with herself. She assures herself that this is their joke again.

Ezreal leans forward, as if taking her very seriously. "I won't. I can stay if - for a bit."

Lux does not know what to make of this earnest reaction; she laughs nervously. At his confused look, she simply cups his cheek and draws his face towards hers.

Ezreal kisses her like she is air and he is drowning. Not in desperation, but enthusiasm. He kisses her with his whole body pressing gently against hers, more and more until he is propped up over her. Her legs are cramped to fit on the couch. To straddle her, one of his legs is off the couch, foot on the floor. He has to hold himself up with an arm over her head, gripping the arm-rest.

It feels strange to be in the shadow of someone shorter than her, but she doesn't have time to think about this for long. Ezreal's lips are chapped and chewed, pressed against hers rough, but in a satisfying, encompassing sort of way. She feels her own breath warm against his face, always so close that it heats her up, too.

Lux has always liked things that are overwhelming. She likes the feeling of being lost to her magic, the few times she gets to really push her limits - like she could burst like a bomb and take out the continent. She likes to feel lost in the world, away from home, like she might never find her way back, like she could escape every responsibility on her shoulders.

Lux also likes to feel like she is drowning in the petricite walls of Demacia. When she is oppressively stifled, that shortness of breath is like proof. It's the evidence that proves she is doing her best for her kingdom. When the life is drained out of her veins, she is normal, she is who they want her to be, and this means that she is loyal, that she is good.

Lux likes to push herself until she breaks and use that shattering as validation, because on some level it means that she is working _harder_ than other people.

Granted, not a lot of this is clear to her in her own numbly dizzied mind, when Ezreal's free hand comes to hold her neck, his thumb lightly tracing over her throat, invoking an intent he doesn't have.

He is careful not to press down in a stark contrast to his way of kissing her further and further against the sofa's thin futon. She feels the wooden frame press into her back; she does not like this as much as she likes his fingers against her throat.

"Can we," Lux manages, between kisses, but still speaking against his lips, "move?"

Ezreal draws back. He swallows thickly, the rise and fall of his chest dramatic and the sunset on his cheeks. The light from the window is bathing the whole room in light. It washes over him, makes him look like he belongs here. It makes Lux feel like both of them do. The glass and the sunset capture a moment in which they both exist; them, and nothing else.

His head tilts, and he looks towards the bedroom. "I just came from there," he says, mournfully, but stands up.

For a moment Lux cannot bring herself to stand, and lays on the sofa, just as breathless. She watches Ezreal as he stretches, taking in the arch of his spine and the lift of his shirt. He grins down at her, as if to assure her he was only kidding, then offers his hand.

When she takes it, he tugs her up. He doesn't let go as they move to the bedroom, though he pauses in the doorway to ask, cautiously, "So you've been sick?"

Lux shakes her head. "A little trouble eating, that's all. I feel fine, now."

He seems comforted. A least, enough to put it aside and step into the bedroom.

***

The bed is small, but they make do. It's easier to have sex on it than it is to sleep side-by-side.

Not that Ezreal sleeps, afterwards. He had already slept until the sun set, and now, in the darkness that only breaks for moonlight through the windows, he lays beside Lux almost impatiently. His shoulder, pressed up alongside hers, is tense, like he is about to bolt from the bed.

Lux does not mind this, but she herself is exhausted. She has not been sleeping well, and now she is properly worn out and ready to rest.

"You can get up," she tells him. Sometimes Ezreal's intense boredom seems ridiculous to her, but she knows it's more to do with having excess energy than it is to do with her. "I don't mind."

"I don't want to," he lies, practically vibrating in place.

"Sure," Lux murmurs. She lets her eyes flutter shut, and rests her hands over her stomach, atop the blankets.

She dozes off in an instant, but just as quickly is woken up as Ezreal rolls onto his side, jostling the whole bed beneath them. It's a struggle to open her eyes and look at him. Sometimes she forgets that she will be able to see him in the darkness, but the glow on his cheeks cuts through the dark as vivid as the moon does the sky.

"What sort of medicine?" Ezreal asks, as if Lux is not _very_ clearly trying to sleep.

She groans in protest, but still answers, "I don't know. Something for nausea."

"Like… Cramps?"

Lux tilts her head, looking at him closely and trying to read between the lines. Trying to determine if there are lines meant to be read between. She can't tell. Maybe it's the darkness.

Maybe it's that she's still godawful at reading Ezreal.

"No," she says, eventually. "That's not - it comes in the middle of the month, lately."

"Huh. So it wasn't that," Ezreal says, like a deduction, but Lux isn't entirely sure he knows that they are only three days from August. He has a history of hardly knowing what month it is.

She does not bother replying, but closes her eyes again. She enjoys the slow crawl of Ezreal's fingers, tracing up and down her throat, then along her collar bone. Down her shoulder and arms and then across her stomach to her sides.

He presses a kiss to her shoulder before getting up.

"I'm gonna go," he tells her.

Half asleep now, Lux replies in an incoherent sound of acknowledgment. A moment later, after processing this: "It's late to be traveling."

Ezreal laughs under his breath, quietly, as if he is not the one keeping her awake. "Worried about me?" He jokes.

Lux whispers, eyes closed, "Of course not."

She does not hear him reply, nor the sound of creaking floorboards. It's a battle to open her eyes and look up at him. He is haloed by the moonlight, paused at the bedside.

Even in the luminescence of his magic, Lux cannot read his expression. He almost looks disappointed, but Lux is certain this is just a trick of the shadows.

Her exhaustion is winning out, pushing her closer to irritation than concern. "What is it?"

Ezreal's eyes dart away. His magic flickers, the perpetual tell that always gives away his poker-face. "Nothing."

He gives her one last kiss before he leaves. Then Lux sinks into the darkness and wishes the bed was soft enough to really sink into, too. She listens to the wood beneath Ezreal's feet; to the creaking doors and the wind against the windowpanes. To his footsteps on the stairs, the sound fading before he even reaches the bottom.

Lux does not hate the isolation. She does not hate to be alone.

If she is honest, the conclusion of that thought is: she does not hate the freedom to see Ezreal so privately. Without worrying about squadrons or walls or the slow but steady travel of rumors, like winds that whisper through these endless grass fields.

She burrows back into her blankets, comfortable in the knowledge that he will be back so predictably.

***

It takes him three weeks to return, and she knows that even this was pushing his magic to its limits. She knows, because for the second time, he arrives, then promptly falls asleep on the sofa.

Lux slips the books he has brought her onto the living room shelf, one by one, then returns to Ezreal's side.

He is sleeping with his arms crossed. Something in this is endearing, but she can't place what. It's as if he is ready to sulk, even in sleep. Ready to argue.

She touches his arm, gently shaking him. "Ezreal. You should lay down in the bed."

He stirs with a grumble under his breath. When his eyes open, it is only barely. He squints at her, frowning, and shakes his head.

"Come now," she scolds.

"Will you come with me?"

This draws her lips into a thin line. "I can't sleep away the day. I need to be on watch."

"Like an attack wouldn't come at night?" Ezreal asks, the words spilling out like he cannot stop himself from being contrary. After an uncomfortable silence he mutters, "My bad."

"Noxian scouts aren't secretive. They're just as likely in the day as the night," Lux says, vaguely impatient. Even so, she has to admit: "Though if we're visited by anything beyond scouts, you're probably correct."

"Then nap through the day," Ezreal says, holding his arms out. "Stay up all night."

"You're a terrible influence."

"You already knew that." Ezreal's arms hang in the air a moment longer, but when he realizes that Lux is not going to take the request for an embrace, he turns it into a stretch. Lux watches the shape of him against the blue skies out the window. After a long yawn, he concedes, "I'll move to the bed if you'll come nap, too."

Lux gives in, and knows this clinginess of his is one of their jokes. This irrational want to spend time together, the hurry to come back to her, the want to lay down together for rest. These are things for couples in love, for couples who _get_ to be in love.

Not for friends who play pretend with each other to pass the time in their own socially barren lives.

***

They wake late in the night, and both bumble their way back to the living room in the dark. For hours of near-silence, they simply sit on the sofa, turned towards its back to stare out the window. Together, they watch the moon reflected on the surface of the lake.

The whole world is midnight blue at this hour. Deep, lake-water blue; flowing river blue. Quiet and slow-moving.

Lux thinks about the fact that she is a girl trapped in a tower. She thinks about having so little say in the matter, because of what she owes to her kingdom and to her family. She thinks about Ezreal, and his freedom, and what that says about how little he has to hold him down.

No family, no expectations. But he stifles his travel to visit her when she is more trapped than usual. She thinks about the fact that he actually _has_ a choice in the matter, and that this is what he chooses.

She thinks about the jokes that they tell each other through their actions and their silences, mimicking and mocking proper couples. Each time, assuring each other through amused glances and rolled eyes: _I know we aren't. I know we aren't._

When she looks his way, his arms are crossed over the back of the sofa. His head rests on them like a pillow, and his eyelids are still heavy. She brushes hair from his forehead, and his eyes watch her lazily, the shape of his mouth hidden by his own sleeve.

The sun rises, the plains to the east set ablaze with its gentle flame. Sunlight spreads heavy, like a blanket dragged sleepily across the floor from bed to sofa. The air feels thin and cold, but time weighs on her shoulders.

Ezreal is still watching her impassively, and the dawn is reflecting in his eyes, painting them a glossed, milky color.

"I can go if you want me to," Ezreal says softly, breaking the silence.

With the decision in her hands, Lux hesitates. A part of her is resentful of him giving this choice to her at all. The unspoken rules they follow don't allow for this. Ezreal is supposed to make statements, not offers. Ezreal does what Ezreal wants to, and this means that neither of them need to worry if it's what Lux wants from him or not. They don't have to worry about how desperately she needs to say no for the sake of the life she's built for herself.

If she tells him to stay, it's admitting that she wants him to, and she does not have the same luxurious freedoms to do so. Not like he does.

Lux settles on saying, "Do as you like," sounding as indifferent as she can manage.

Now he turns to look at her. His brow is furrowed and his mouth pulled tight, like he is trying to solve a difficult puzzle.

Ezreal sighs, exasperated, like his calculations got him nowhere, and it's brought him to his wit's end. "Can't you just - tell me what you want?"

"No," Lux hears herself say. It feels as if someone else is speaking for her, calm and emotionless. "I don't have any preference on this matter."

Ezreal grunts. "That's bullshit. You get more and more freedom with the Illuminators. And before you say it, this assignment is a rare exception and you know it. So tell me. What do you want me to do?"

Her heart tightens with guilt. She doesn't like to lie. It's been her whole life, and she has hated every moment of it before the Illuminators allowed her brief truths.

It isn't fair that she has to feel this way. Not when the act between them has always been mutually held up. _It has,_ she insists to herself. _It has._ "Why is it up to me?"

"Because that's how it _works_. You know what I want."

"No I don't," Lux argues, the denial like reflex.

"Then you aren't paying attention." Ezreal snaps. Lux only realizes how tense his shoulders have gone when he relaxes them, sighing again. He looks as tired as when they first woke from their nap. "I thought if I just… Stopped joking around with you, you'd change your mind and decide it was worth taking seriously."

 _It isn't up to either of us,_ she thinks with vehemence. She tries to play clueless, if not still annoyed, but the words come out tentative - cautious. "Take _what_ seriously?"

She gets the impression that Ezreal's silence is less a refusal to answer and more that he is uncertain of what to say. He runs a hand through his unruly hair, then stands up. The firm sofa is too hard to feel any different, but the wood groans in protest beneath his feet.

"Whatever," he murmurs. It with a dawning sort of horror that Lux realizes that the games were not what she thought, even when the both of them were playing. "I'll give you space."

Lux does not have the heart to stop him, nor to watch his figure through the window, slowly disappearing into the distance. Vanishing, with no promise to return.

***

There is a teenage girl in the living room. She is sitting on the sofa, hunched forward with her hands set between her open knees.

There is something familiar about her. About her blonde hair that shimmers blue when the light through the window catches it. About her eyes, milky pale blue, the color of the early morning if not for the thick fog outside. Her bangs are braided out of her face, and the rest of her hair cascades down to her waist. But Lux is certain she would not forget someone with such a pretty face; with such a pretty magic sparkle to her hair.

Lux recognizes her clothes as distinctly Demacian. She knows the white material of her dress and she knows the style of the blue and gold ribbons that adorn the ruffled edge of its skirts. She knows the clasp and cut of her layered cloak, and the expensive, intricately patterned trim around its edges.

She recognizes the gauntlet on her arm.

Lux surges forward on instinct, pulling her magic as desperately as she can. It feels weak, the tall walls of Demacia in her mind still casting a long shadow over her, but she hurls light at the stranger, trying to make her own walls, trying to bind her.  
  
In a golden flash, the girl is behind her, her feet dropping to the floor with grace before she takes three swift steps backwards.

Lux whirls to face her. The stranger is smiling, but Lux does not sense any malice behind it. When she swings her arms playfully behind her back, Lux realizes: the gauntlet is on the wrong hand.

It's identical to Ezreal's, like the other half of a matching set. This only soothes Lux a fraction. She keeps her narrow eyes trained on the stranger in her tower, carefully feeling the pulse of her own magic.

As if Lux is no threat, now the stranger looks away from her, turning to look around the room. Her eyes are bright, like she is seeing it for the first time. Like she had not been waiting patiently for Lux on the sofa.

"Who are you?" Lux demands. "What do you want?"

Even without warning of a visit, Lux would have trusted a pretty Demacian girl in high class clothes. But there was no warning - and the girl has his gauntlet.

"I'm Mana," the girl answers, easily, her gaze leisurely dropping back to meet Lux. She pauses. "Well, sort of. Like a reflection, or an echo. Like how your life flashes before your eyes before you die, supposedly, or like a whirlpool. Or like - the eye of a hurricane, maybe."

Her voice is slow and whimsical, but at this last concept, she nods towards the windows behind Lux. With great caution, Lux risks looking, too.

What she had thought was an oddly bright-lit fog is a thick whirlwind. Not like the spiral of a hurricane at all, but like the inside of a sphere made of wind. Yet they are completely untouched by it. The tower does not creak or tremble; there is no debris in those white winds.

"What do you _want?_ " Lux asks again.

"From you? Not much," Mana says, pursing her lips for just a moment, just one falter in her cheery attitude. The mask slips on again, and she laughs lightly. "Well, no, I mean, I guess I need you to live, at least? Wrong question, though. This isn't really about what I want. I'm not even - me? It's like an echo, I told you."

The informal way she talks doesn't match her appearance. The quality of her clothes is too nice for how she holds herself, undignified.

And nothing she says makes _sense_.

"Then why _are_ you here?"

Mana's eyes drift, her mouth open like a child trying to think of a convincing lie. She looks up to the ceiling, following its curve down the wall. "It's like when your life flashes before your eyes," she repeats, shifting her weight uncomfortably. "It's morning. Don't you want to bathe?"

"Stop your metaphors and riddles," Lux demands, and startles when Mana shrinks back just a bit, looking somewhere between guilty and angry.

She really is like a child.

Mana's blue eyes are pale and reflective as they dart over her own shoulder. She turns halfway and gestures to the bathroom. "The water is running."

Lux blinks. Her hearing is not so dull that she wouldn't have heard it, even through the commotion. But now it's clear as day - which is perhaps a poor metaphor given that the world is obscured by the winds outside.

"I'm in a dream," Lux deduces, bringing a hand to her chin and mulling over the details in her mind. "A lucid dream. A magic dream?"

"The water is running," Mana tells her again, softly.

Even with her deduction, Lux shoots her a look through narrowed eyes. If it's a magic dream, then by who's hand? And for what purpose?

"Turn it off, then," Lux commands, distracted.

Mana's lips jut, a pout unfitting for a girl her age - she must be nearly sixteen, at least. Even so, she obeys. She brushes through the open door and crosses the room to the tub. Lux watches her closely.

The tub is nearly full, the water clear as if to highlight the unsightly stains on the inside of the tub. Mana reaches for the faucet.

Her hand passes through it.

When she looks back to Lux, it is not with an air of _I told you so._ Instead she looks ready to be scolded, unable to meet her eyes properly and huffing to put on a brave face.

"Don't pout, you look childish," Lux tells her, somehow annoyed.

Mana grumbles something laced with profanity under her breath, but steps away to give Lux room to turn off the tap herself.

The faucet squeaks under her burning palms, as rough and hard to turn as always. The sensation is vivid, not dull and distant like her dreams tend to be. She stares down into the water as it gives its final ripples, the faucet dripping slowly.

Mana is looking at her expectantly, but Lux turns away, storming out of the room and straight through the living room.

"Wait!" Mana cries, rushing after her. "Wait, you have to do it right!"

Lux throws open the door to the balcony. There is nothing but a light breeze. Ten feet away, a windstorm obscures any scenery, any implication of a world beyond the tower. Lux rounds the corner and rushes down the stairs, Mana two steps behind her, a flurry of white skirts and blue cloaks. 

The grass is wet with morning dew under her bare feet. Lux walks towards the wind, as close as she dares. She can feel the magic. The hum of it. There's something strange. Like it's fighting, moving slow. It isn't the way of magic Lux is used to, all hot vibrations, every atom of the world in rapid-fire movements to be manipulated and mimicked. It's sluggish.

Mana steps up beside her, quieting, staring into the wall. Both their hair is whipping this close to the wind. Both of them growing it out so long that it twists and tangles up together.

It would be nearly indistinguishable, the both of them blonde, except that Mana's hair is blue, now. Shimmering, shifting like ocean waves on sand, blue nearly all the way to the top of her head.

"If you do it right, you'll get back to where you were," Mana says, not with emotion, but loud enough to be heard over the whistle. "And you'll be okay."

"Who did this?" Lux demands.

Mana breaks into a grin, and Lux has no choice but to follow her back up the stairs, watching as the magic blue of her hair recedes to only a trick of the light. "Oh, an excellent question! Now, the forging style most closely matches the Mysran Period, around when King Ohn was at the height of his political power. But the spell itself - well, it's closer to the spells of ancient Zauhn! Or, well, it wasn't called Zauhn back then. It wasn't even Piltover, yet! You can see how weird that is, right?"

Lux pinches the bridge of her nose, desperately trying to remember her childhood history lessons. They have long-since been useful; the most she needs them for these days is deciphering Ezreal's inane, if not endearingly passionate rambling. She opens her mouth to say something vaguely affirmative, but Mana cuts her off.

"The spell is waaaay older than the Mysran Period!" Mana answers for her, proudly. "So my leading theory is that the spell was actually in the _gem_! Since they make such good conduits and all."

"You are giving me a terrible headache," Lux moans, just as she does when Ezreal rambles this way. The history lesson and spell theory aside, this hasn't answered her question in the slightest.

Mana steps aside for Lux to open the door, and follows her back inside. She only grins. When the door has closed she insists again, "It's morning. You should take a bath. The tub is ready for you."

"I suppose that if you were going to attack me, you would have tried it by now," Lux mutters, still hesitant. There is letting your guard down, and then there is getting naked and climbing into a tub. Lux would like to think that she isn't that stupid.

No matter how disarming Mana is with her charming, incoherent passions.

"I can't touch you," Mana points out. She holds out her hand - the golden gauntlet - towards Lux. When Lux tries to touch her, she passes through like a ghost. "See? Besides, I'm not even armed."

"With that gauntlet, you are."

Mana brings her arm to her chest as if to embrace it fondly, eyes fluttering shut for just a moment and a smile turning up her pink lips. "Yes, maybe. But not my weapon of choice."

Lux sighs, and enters the bathroom. Mana sits down on the sofa and swings one leg up to rest her ankle up on the other knee.

"Your skirt," Lux calls over her shoulder, and hears the obedient shifting as Mana tries to sit more ladylike.

***

The water is still warm. Lux swallows back surprise, reminding herself that this is magic, that this is a dream. This is _something_.

But it's strong, for how close they are to the walls. Strong, and if it exists in reality, showy. It's impossible to know how much time has passed without being able to track the sun - impossible to know how feasible it is to expect rescue from faraway stationed knights or other watchtowers.

Or…

Lux pushes Ezreal from her mind. She sinks deeper into the water, feeling her hair flow around her, weightless.

Sometimes she is careful to pin it up, keeping it out of the water. Her hair grows thick, and she keeps it so long. To get it wet in the morning means to go to bed with it still cold and damp, to spend the whole day with that discomfort. Today she was too distracted.

It feels heavy when she finally climbs out of the tub. She draws a towel around herself and dries it as best as she can before giving up. She forgot to bring clothes in with her, and does not particularly want to walk by Mana in a towel, so for now she pulls her white sleeping gown on again. She feels the smooth silk flutter down to her knees comfortably.

She drapes the towel over her shoulders to keep her hair from dampening her whole back, and pads back out to the living room.

Mana is sprawled across the sofa, feet kicked up on an arm rest, holding her gauntleted hand up in the air. She seems to be looking at it intently.

"Where did you get that?" Lux asks, feeling cautious all over again.

"Look outside," Mana says instead.

The wind is closer, now, like it's closing in. Mana doesn't seem worried, but Lux still doesn't know the purpose of this spell, or what side of it Mana is on.

"Is that good?"

"Debatable," Mana says, shrugging. She looks at Lux sidelong, an unreadable hesitance crossing her face before she smiles back up at the gauntlet. "… This was a gift."

"From Ezreal?" Lux bites out, startled at how vicious she sounds. The words are full of suspicion, disbelief, and…

Mana turns to look at Lux, and her whole face contorts like she is trying not to laugh. "You're jealous! That's actually - wow. That's actually _really_ cute, m-"

"-I'm not jealous," Lux interrupts with severity. "I'm _concerned_ that you have something like that. Something I know is rare, and something I know the owner would never part with."

"Wrong hand," Mana points out.

Lux falters. Her cheeks feel warm. "I know. Even so."

"Then let's say I found it," Mana offers, swinging herself upright. Her eyes are sparkling. "I found it, or it was a gift. Both are true. Anyway, you don't need to be so… _Concerned_. He still has his half."

"You know him."

Mana laughs. She laughs, and then her eyes go soft, distant, and she looks away. Her smile fades. "Yeah. Of course."

There's an uncomfortable heat in Lux's gut that she cannot place, different from the nausea she's been having of late. It's a heat that warms her stomach and her chest, and even her face.

"Tell me how you know Ezreal."

Mana looks at her speculatively. "You should eat breakfast."

Seething, Lux cooks herself a mix of vegetables and scrambled eggs. It was meant to be an omelet, but she is having trouble making careful motions, frustrated and furious with herself for being so inexplicably worked up.

No, maybe it makes sense to be worked up over being trapped in a dream, in a spell, with an inconvenient stranger.

Most people Lux knows are inconvenient strangers, she muses, and with a sigh, asks, "Would you like some?"

Mana straightens in her seat, starry-eyed despite Lux's harsh tone. Then deflates. "Can't touch, remember?"

"Ah," Lux says, and turns back to the skillet.

The food sizzles, and Lux hears the way Mana shifts in her seat. The way she nearly holds her breath. Finally, the younger girl blurts out, "Are you a good cook?"

"Not particularly," Lux answers idly. "I had cooking lessons, and I know how to get by. In most cases you can get by just heating things up and putting spices on them, so it's not terribly difficult. But I'm more accustomed to having food prepared for me by servants or eating pre-prepared travel rations."

"Big gap," Mana comments.

Lux eyes her food, deeming it ready, then transfers it onto a plate. "Yes, well. There's little margin for an ordinary, in-between life."

"Which do you prefer?"

Lux carries her meal to the sofa; Mana scrambles to make room for her, and the two sit beside one another. Lux considers between bites.

"I can't claim not to prefer the cooking of proper chefs," she admits. "But I would rather be outside the walls."

She tries to ignore the way Mana watches her in silence. Calculating, then hesitating with her mouth open.

Finally Lux asks, impatient, "What is it?"

"Nothing," Mana says, and looks away. Her tone is soft again, as if this is an admission of her own guilt when she adds, "I just wondered when that changed."

"My preference for freedom began the second I tasted it." Lux gets the feeling she is not answering the question properly, though she is being completely sincere.

Mana's weak smile doesn't meet her sunrise-eyes. "Yeah," Mana murmurs, gaze drifting. "Yeah, of course." She looks bitter.

The storm is incrementally closer when Lux has finished her breakfast. She looks out the window at it.

"What next?" Lux asks, not looking over at her unwanted guest. "You've been telling me what to do all morning."

Mana laughs. "There isn't much to do, is there?" Her volume drops, almost drowsily, and Lux sees her reflection as she turns to look out the window, too. "They probably thought it would be so safe for you."

Lux's stomach drops; she reaches out, only catching the futile instinct to grab Mana's arm half-way. "What do you mean?"

The circle is closing in, as slow as melting ice. It's a delicate thing, but Lux can feel the minute sway of the tower now.

Mana flinches back from her as if expecting to be hit and forgetting she could have dodged with the gauntlet. That Lux couldn't have touched her either way. She slowly opens her eyes, still drawn back into herself.

"Why are you afraid of me?" Lux asks sharply.

"I'm not," Mana says in a hurry, so fast she slurs the words together. "Don't be mad at me!"

"If you don't want me to be angry with you, _answer_ my questions. _Who_ thought it would be safe?" Lux looks out the window, and her shoulders sag helplessly. She does not know what to do about this spell. Her own magic is too weak to count on stretching past what she's practiced, and nothing she knows seems helpful. Feeling resigned, Lux ventures, "What happens when the wind closes in?"

Mana draws one leg up to her chest, unmindful of her skirts again. Curling close to her knee, mouth pressed against it, she sighs. "We'll both be okay. I want you to trust that. Outside - that magic - it isn't the threat."

Lux does not miss that. "Then what is?"

Mana gives a helpless smile, looking all the more like she wants to disappear into her cloaks.

Skin prickling, Lux glances back out the window.

Whatever that circle is obscuring is the threat. And if Mana's word can be trusted, it's a threat to both of them. Lux doesn't bother asking how, given that the other girl is incorporeal. She knows she won't get an answer. 

"How are you from Demacia?" Lux asks, veering into another conversation. She had meant to soothe Mana, even if only somewhat, but knows the words come out cold. "With magic radiating out of you and that gauntlet…"

It has the opposite effect, which Lux realizes belatedly that she should have expected. Being a mage in Demacia would never be a cheerful subject, and Mana reaches to grasp at her cloak and tug it closer over her shoulders. But Lux is curious, because Mana seems far too young to simply be another secret of the Illuminators, like herself.

"I've never been inside the walls," she whispers.

Lux frowns. "But your clothes…"

"Gifts." She sounds bitter.

"How kind," Lux says, mildly.

Mana bites her lip for a moment, trying not to burst, but only lasts a moment. Then she growls, glaring at her feet, and says, "Yeah, _you_ probably think so. But just giving presents isn't… Ugh. Never mind."

Lux understands. Gifts have been the only love she's ever known from her parents. And the one gift they gave her that she treasures the most, the swell of magic inside her, engraved in her body - is one they would hate her for. Pretty things have always been nice, but they're no replacement for a parent's love and presence.

It is with sympathy that she tries to rest a gentle touch on Mana's shoulder. She passes through her. Mana gives her a wavering smile.

"What about the gauntlet?" Lux tries, instead, drawing her hand back. "You called it a gift and seemed fond enough of it."

"Because I found it!" Mana repeats, insistent. "We found it together, and I got to keep it."

"You… And Ezreal? Or did you find it with someone else?"

Mana shifts, uncomfortably. The tower creaks and leans, shuddering against the winds. Lux tries to ignore it. _If Ezreal had found another gauntlet_ , Lux thinks, _he would never let it go_. He would never have been able to resist telling her, either. Lux glances at the sheathed sword he left her, still propped against the wall by the door.

"Yeah. We found it - somewhere hard to reach. Somewhere we could only get to because he already had his."

Lux would like to think that Ezreal would have told her about his friendship with a young girl.

But it occurs to her that she does not know what friends Ezreal keeps, if any. She winces, and thinks of all the times they have laid in bed for hours, talking slow about everything.

She had thought everything.

No, Lux reminds herself. She had thought nothing. But she had thought that was on purpose, an unspoken agreement between them. To talk about archeology and magic and bicker about the world around them. To lace their fingers and bump bare shoulders together. Words that meant nothing - and nothing else. Nothing else.

She feels nauseous.

"Go ahead," Mana says, detached, gesturing towards the bathroom. "Throw up if you're going to."

"I'm not," Lux asserts.

Within the hour, she vomits into the toilet, bitterly regretting that she hadn't bothered to take the medicine Ezreal brought her. She had felt fine. It can't hurt to take some now, she decides, already feeling fine again. Just in case, she washes up, then grabs for the medicine off the top of the bookshelf.

"That won't help."

"How do you know?" Lux asks, less to argue and more as a genuine question.

"It's already happened," Mana says. Then shrugs. "So I mean, take it. You're supposed to. But it isn't going to help. You'll feel better, but it's not because of the medicine."

Lux takes it anyway.

The window panes are rattling, but the sway of the tower does not feel dangerous. The wind does not splinter wood or push it to its limits.

***

Lux does no get many answers out of her in the passing hours. Occasionally Mana will tell her something to do - something trivial that Lux will end up doing, no matter how hard she tries to put it off. Read a chapter of this book. Make your bed.

When it comes to chores, Lux gets the impression that Mana is enjoying bossing her around. With most other tasks, there is nothing but boredom.

The water runs from the tap before Lux enters the room. "Wash your face," Mana tells her.

A window is open, letting in the wind from outside as if it were just a gentle breeze. Mana tells her, "Shut that window."

Her book falls from the coffee table on its own, and minutes later, Lux bumps into the table so hard it nearly tips over. "The book," Mana tells her, "the book."

Time is out of sync with itself. Things in the tower are happening before she makes them happen. It's like having Mana help her to catch up with the room around her.

Outside the window is blinding bright, but Mana whispers, "It's dark."

The tower is still well lit inside, as if it really was the foggy morning that Lux had mistaken it for, hours ago. But Lux understands well enough by now, and crosses the room to light the lantern.

Mana has gone tense. Lux doesn't get a chance to ask why - the wind breaches the tower.

It does not blow the door open, does not shatter through the windows. It simply passes through the walls as if they were nothing, a sphere the size of the room, circling around Lux.

The air has thinned out, Lux realizes, blinking rapidly against the breeze. It does not block what lies beyond it anymore. It does not even blow out her lantern. She closes her eyes for a split second, and when she opens them again, the room is dark, lit only by the lantern.

She has to squint through the cold air against her eyes, but sees that it is night outside the tower. She can see the world again. The other towers with their dim-lit lanterns flickering against the windows. The grassy fields and the dark rivers and lake. And behind her, the kingdom walls, tall and light, even in the darkness.

"It's getting weaker," Lux observes, like a question. She glances to Mana, who has taken to leaning against the door, arms crossed over her chest.

Mana purses her lips and looks away. "I don't hate you," she says.

Lux blinks, startled.

The wind is now such a soft breeze through the room. It doesn't frighten her anymore.

She does not know this magic, but she does not fear it. It gets softer the closer it gets. Instead of something broad and dangerous, something unknowable and vast, it is small and intimate, melding itself around her in a way that is not entirely unpleasant.

"I can't say whether or not I hate you," Lux returns, as amicably as she can. "Not until I know what this spell does."

A look of utter heartbreak crosses Mana's face. Her eyes go wide and glossy with unshed tears, her brow furrowed and lips gently parted like she can't find the words. She does not slip a cheerful mask on as easily as before; this time Mana bites her lip and turns her head away, leaning hard against the door if she wants to back up further than it will let her.

"Mana," Lux ventures, gently. She doesn't know how to soothe her. Her own pragmatism doesn't mean that Lux _wants_ to see a young girl so upset. She doesn't understand her impact on the girl. She doesn't understand her own desire to comfort her, nor her complete inability to do it.

"I know this won't carry over," Mana says, abruptly, still not looking back at Lux. "I know that I'm - it's magic. A copy. Like a shadow. So I feel all the things I would feel and I think all the things I would think, but I'm not me. So nothing you say is going to be real. I won't remember this. I don't even think _you'll_ remember this. This isn't a do-over, it's just a continuation. Nothing'll change."

"Mana," Lux says again. "I don't have a good grasp of anything going on. I don't understand this spell. I don't know how to help you unless you explain."

Mana scrubs at her eyes, but doesn't cry. She shakes her head.

"What is - Ezreal like?" She asks, stumbling over his name as if she'd been about to call him something else. "I know in reality I won't get to hear it, but I still want to know how he was back then. I saw you. I wanted to see him."

"Back then," Lux repeats, distantly.

"There isn't much time," Mana murmurs, as if she could back out of having asked.

"You said you know Ezreal," Lux says.

Mana shifts her weight. Before Lux can ask another question, Mana asks, "Hey, do you think I'm even real? Or just an image you're conjuring from your subconscious for the spell to use? And I guess asking stuff like this would mean you're figuring it out?"

"What?"

Lux feels dizzy; she has to take a deep breath. The spell seems to offer air to her, refreshing and cleansing, and it's strange to be grateful to something she has been dreading all day.

"Hm," Mana says, lip quirking in a humorless smile. "Maybe not."

"When are you-" Lux tries.

Mana interrupts her again. "I really love him. Probably more than I love you, even though he's not that great." She only manages to meet Lux's eyes for a split second, then looks down to her own feet. "He used to take me places that were way too dangerous when I was little. Like - he knew I was too young to leave alone, but didn't want to change his plans, or leave me with grandma and grandpa. And then as soon as I got older, he stopped taking me anywhere at all. He's kind of an asshole."

Lux purses her lips and holds her tongue, overwhelmed with questions she wants to ask. Her mind is racing, and she can feel her pulse slamming in her wrist, can feel her heart beating fast.

Mana's voice goes bitter. "But at least I get to see him sometimes, and at least he talks to me like a _person_ when he's around."

"Mana," Lux says, more firmly this time. "What is Ezreal to you?"

"Still jealous?" Mana asks, wryly. "I don't know why you would be. He loves you so much, it's fucking ridiculous."

"Language," Lux chides, without even thinking.

Ignoring her, Mana continues, eyes narrowed but her gaze still resolutely towards the ground. "It's like - he doesn't think you can do anything wrong. No matter how long you stay behind those walls or how long you go on your missions… No matter how long you ignore us, it's like you lit the stars and moon yourself."

Lux swallows. "I don't want that," she says, weakly. She doesn't want to stay behind those godawful walls, feeling her magic turn to dust. She doesn't want to stay the closed off person they turn her into.

Mana's eyes are glassy. Her face scrunches, but the tears spill out despite her best efforts. "When does that change?" She asks. Her voice cracks when she demands, "Is it only after I'm born?"

Lux feels her legs go out from under her, dropping down to her knees on the floor. She has to look up at Mana, watching the girl wipe tears from her cheeks over and over, each time hoping this wave will be the last. Lux wants to reach up, to help wipe them away, but knows that her hands would pass right through.

Her chest feels hollow, shot through, like this slowly swirling air around her was stolen from her own lungs.

"Even - even when you visit…" Mana tries, stuttering. She has to pause to snivel, to wipe helplessly at her eyes. She doesn't seem to know how to finish that sentence, and instead says, "You were nicer today than you ever are to me."

"I'm sorry," Lux says, not sure what else to say. She brings one hand to her stomach. She has always been so thin; it hardly feels different than usual. Not yet.

Mana sniffs. "I want to know what dad was like when he was my age. I already got to see how you are." She sounds tremendously disappointed with what she's found. Lux doesn't blame her.

Lux hesitates. "He's just as bad as always," she murmurs. "He's messy and dangerous and irresponsible. I don't think he'll ever change."

"I've never met your side of my family," Mana admits. "I don't think they even know I exist. I don't think you ever told them."

"I'm sorry," Lux says again. A part of her prays that Mana is just a figment of the spell. Her own subconscious knowing what the rest of her has been denying for three months and shoving it in her face like a panic attack.

She knows better.

Suddenly, Lux realizes that the Illuminators knew. That they sent her here to let her hide this. Another sliver of freedom, doled out in secret by the same gracious authorities that take it away when she is home.

Mana is quiet, but her crying has stopped. She does not look even remotely comforted, but has drawn her cloak around her shoulders like a comfort blanket, grasping it tight with her gauntleted hand. She sounds drained, like now that she has vented her emotions, they are done and gone. Her voice still trembles. "There's a sound, outside."

Lux draws up off the ground on shaky legs. She gives Mana a questioning look, unsure of what the response is to that. She gets no answer, and so she steps closer to the window to look outside. She squints through the darkness.

"Too late," Mana observes. It's a foregone conclusion.

There is something bright, but it is not in the distance. It is close and sudden. Lux is not sure if it was meant to be this way or if it is more of the tower being out of sync with time, but there is little time between the distant sound of crackling and embers and the fire that eats at the walls.

The tower burns bright, set ablaze by torches and arrows and - maybe magic, Lux can't be sure. Through the heat she is dizzy. She ducks her head down low and shoulders the door open. The balcony railing is embers; the crumble of wood burnt to ash beneath her feet is horrifying from this high up.

Lux turns to look for Mana, startled when the girl is standing right behind her, expression blank and unconcerned. The fire does not twist toward her like a threat the way it does Lux, and she has to shake off the urge to protect a girl who isn't really there.

In a hurry, Lux rounds the corner to get to the stairs, jumping back when she comes face to face with a Noxian scout, dressed in thick clothes to keep the fire from his own skin. Still risking the collapse of the tower to make sure she dies. Lux isn't surprised at the cruelty.

She draws power from the light of the flames, shooting walls of light up around him. Just that wears her out; she doesn't have the energy to turn it into an attack. Instead she shoves his chest as hard as she can with both arms - watches him tumble down the steps. At the bottom his body crashes into two more scouts.

Sparks are hitting her bare arms, singeing the tips of her hair. She is grateful, now, for it still being damp from the bath this morning. Her nightgown isn't so lucky, but she can only spare a moment to pat out a flame at her thigh.

She has to draw more magic. The walls are far away, Lux tells herself. Their shadow is just in her mind, just a mental block because she can see them. Her body heaves with exertion; she rushes down the stairs, pulling as much energy as she can as she goes. It tightens inside her, tight like a bow string, like a fist drawn back.

In the grass, one of the scouts shoves the one she'd pushed to the side, his body slamming into the burning support beam. It creaks ominously, cracking and crackling.

She can't make them out over the flame, but they are yelling at one another for a frenzied moment as she rushes down the steps toward them. Then one of them darts away, running west - towards Terbisia. Or maybe past - towards the walls.

 _It's fine,_ Lux tells herself. The walls are well guarded and he is one soldier. With her watchtower burning bright like this, they have their warning. This was not meant to be a siege, but an warning - an assassination.

She feels her magic sharpen, so much of it that it's starting to hurt her insides to hold onto.

The scout at the bottom of the steps grins at her, wild-eyed with flames flickering light and shadows over his face. He draws his sword, a toothed blade, and waits, knowing she has no other route. Lux flinches at even the thought of that sword tearing through her skin. She is no match for close-range weapons. No match for weapons at all, really. The strength of her magic has always been distance, but these stairs give her no other route.

She could jump off the edge when she gets close, she thinks. She presses a hand to the railing as she descends, testing. It burns her hand, and she flinches but presses down into the pain. It crumbles too easily, and Lux hisses.

The Noxian scout shouts something at her. He is close enough to hear, but Lux only hears Mana's voice behind her, softly telling her what to do, the only option that Lux could think of anyway. Another foregone conclusion. "Burst."

Lux fires the light she's gathered, squinting to keep from blinding herself. It sears the scout before he can dodge out of the way, before he can react at all. The smell of burning flesh is only stronger, but not new. Not with Lux still surrounded by fire.

Her light did not just burn the scout. It burned away the rest of the stairs. They crumble away, black and charred, and Lux stares helplessly down at what is still a jump far too high to make.

A broken leg is better than burning to death, she thinks, but before she can set a hand on the railing again, Mana tells her, "Go back."

If this was a foregone conclusion, Lux does not understand the impulse that guided it. But she does not think there is any point in fighting it. She scrambles back up the stairs, hearing more steps fall away and refusing to look back and see how close they were behind her.

The windows have shattered, glass covering the floor, glinting with the orange dance of flames.

" _Why_ come back?!" Lux demands.

"You're the one that did it!" Mana snaps. "Don't ask me."

The room is burning around them. Lux rushes to the bathroom and tries to turn the faucets, already knowing it won't work. The flow of water is not enough; she does not have anything to break the pipes with to force it. The only thing she can think of is the sword Ezreal had left her. She doesn't think it will work, but has no options.

Blood is pounding in her ears, adrenaline coursing through her, and Lux hears the loudest groan of wood yet. There is a crash, more wood burning away, collapsing to the ground, and the tower lurches. Lux hardly keeps her balance.

She reaches out on memory for the sword, but her hands grasp at nothing. Her stomach drops. The sheath is empty on the floor.

"Mom," Mana says, behind her. Lux turns, amazed that she has the capacity to feel horrified at the title, of all things, in this situation.

Mana is holding out the sword to her, holding it in her hands. "The spell is like a whirlpool. Or like an echo going backwards. Or… When your life flashes before your eyes before you die."

"One day is not my life," Lux protests. Then, taking the sword gingerly, fire burning her soles and singeing the bottom of her nightgown, "Am I going to die?"

"Yes," Mana says. When their fingers brush, she still passes right through Lux. But when she touches the sword, pressing her fingers to the gem embedded in its hilt, Lux feels the pressure against its weight. "But not today."

The fire burns through the last support holding the tower up. Mana disappears - everything disappears. The tower falls, and Lux falls with it, her vision going black with the shock of pain.

***

Lux wakes up to a soft breeze on her cheeks. A swirling, soothing wind, as cold as steel, but soft as magic. Slowly dispersing into the evening chill.

She stares up at the stars sparkling in the sky, and listens to the crackling fire.

Lux sits up in the wreckage. She is surrounded by the burned remains of the fallen tower, fires still burning, embers still glowing. But there is nothing within a two foot radius of her. Glass and wood and ash border the circumference as if separated by a wall.

The roof of the tower is in the biggest pieces, wood and metal still held together, but unsupported. It should have crushed her. It _did_ crush her. But like everything else, the overlapping pieces of debris are impossibly pushed away.

She staggers to her feet, shoving the sword grasped in her hand into the grass to help support her weight.

In the distance, another tower is burning, but not toppled.

With a heave, Lux pulls the sword back out of the ground, and runs toward the wall. 

Her feet are not burned, she realizes distantly. Not as badly as they should be. There is ash smudged all over her, just like there are small burns all over her body. But they should have been bad. They should have killed her. Her lungs should be aching with smoke, but instead it is only exhaustion that burns inside them.

Another scout catches up with her.

He looks startled, thrown off guard even as he drops his weight, pointing his spear towards her. Lux is sure she's a sight, still in her nightgown after walking through a deadly fire and making it out alive.

She watches his eyes scan her, resting on her sword, before he settles on a grin. He knows how to fight against a swordsman - one without armor must be a special treat.

They circle each other for three steps, tense, waiting for the right moment to attack.

The scout decides in an instant. He lunges toward her, thrusting the spear out far past sword-range, loosening his grip for it to shoot forward farther than expected.

Lux lets go of her sword without hesitation, dodging out of the way weightlessly. As he draws his spear back, startled, eyes darting from the sword to her, Lux hurls out another snare of light.

There is not as much to draw from, this time. Not as much light to redirect. Only the glow of distant burning towers and the starlight overhead. She is hardly closer to the wall, Lux tells herself, _wills_ herself to believe. It's true - the kingdom is still just a dollhouse fence in the distance, miles and miles away.

She pushes all the light she can onto the man and bursts it atop him; he screams as he burns, doubling over. He does not die as fast as the other scout. Her magic was not strong enough to give him that mercy.

Lux takes in deep, gulping breaths of air. She draws back the light from where it has dispersed, pulling it back into place, back into prismatic walls once more. They are weaker now. The scout reaches a hand through and it sizzles but does not boil his skin.

He does not have the strength to fight it when Lux takes his spear and drives it through him.

She returns to her sword, heaving its weight out of the ground, and continues her chase.

***

She catches up to the escaped scout only because he has stopped to examine the terrain. He must know that getting too close to the walls is nothing but a death wish.

It doesn't matter. Killing Lux was a death wish, too.

The moonlight glints on his teeth when he sees her and smiles wide. "You lived? How tenacious you are."

Lux tries to hide how out of breath she is, tries to hold the sword out to him like a threat, and grinds out, "I'm cursed."

"To live?" He asks. He laughs, and Lux's stomach churns.

She hates this. Being able to speak with someone, no matter how cruelly, no matter how impersonally, and knowing that you are trapped by circumstance. You will fight until one of you dies. In the cold of midnight, something about it just seems terribly _sad_.

But only because it is unavoidable.

The man crouches down, curved daggers in both hands. "I'll help you with that."

Lux tries to draw light from the moon, full and bright overhead. She thinks about its glint in her hair and the way white silk reflects light. She thinks about the tiniest glimmers of light that curve in dewdrops on the grass.

She tries to build walls, feels the distant push of magic from the distance, offered up to her as if carried by the reflective surface of a stream.

She tries to throw it out as an attack.

All it does is slow him down as he dashes toward her. Trips him up, makes his step stumble with a sizzling pain, burning clothes to flesh in small patches. It's far from enough. Lux draws the light back to her, weaker on its second pull, but enough to push into his eyes, skewing the swing of his dagger away from her. He slices her cheek instead of her throat.

The magic behind her is getting closer, whatever it is, but Lux does not have time to wait for it.

When the scout swings his other arm towards her, Lux throws all her strength into swinging the sword up. Her arc is sloppy, too weak to cut, but enough to knock his arm off balance and give her another moment to back up, dragging the blade with her.

"So you're bad with magic and bad with a sword," the scout gloats. She doesn't miss the way he leans his weight awkwardly off of his injured leg; the way he rolls his shoulder.

He charges her again; this time she has to drop the sword to move fast enough to dodge. First dropping down below a swing, then leaping to the side.

He thrusts a blade toward her, hoping to catch her with its edge, but must rest his weight on an injury - he stumbles forward, closer to Lux, but clumsily. She shoves an elbow against his chest, pushing off of him to get further away. He catches her thigh with one dagger; she feels the wet of blood sticking to the bottom of her nightgown before she understands the sting of the cut.

He rises to his feet slow, but with confidence still set all through him. Lux feels herself gasping for breath, legs trembling and vision blurring. The nausea is kicking in, the exhaustion from the burning tower and how far she has run with a heavy blade in hand.

Then the magic is close enough. There is a familiar light to pull, a bright glow, brighter than fire.

When the scout lunges to her, Lux does not dodge; she slams the light around him like a cage, trapping his outstretched arms between beams to keep him from so much as turning.

There is a distant part of her that thinks of how sad it is that he does not beg or cry. She wonders what a life is worth if you don't bother pleading to keep it. But that would be too weak for a Noxian. He bites his lip so hard it bleeds, holding in his fear.

She paces back to her sword and drags it back to the man, carving a shallow trail through the dirt with its tip. She stands behind him.

Lux considers apologizing, but does not. She wouldn't mean it.

It's easy to turn these parts of herself off. Easy to flip them like a switch.

She lifts the heavy blade against the man's back and lets all her weight fall against it, stabbing him through. To his credit, he does not cry out even in this. He only chokes wordlessly on his own blood, then sizzles as he falls into her light before she disperses it.

Lux heaves, bent over his body. She takes in deep breathes, despite the overwhelming smell of smoke on her skin and blood on his.

Finally, she straightens with effort, pulling the sword out of her enemy's body with a squelch. She makes a face at the blood on it, and wonders how to apologize to Ezreal for making a mess of his artifact and using up the enchantment in it.

A warm body crashes into hers with a golden glimmer, arms wrapping tight around her. She stumbles back two steps, barely keeping her balance as blond hair tickles her face and hot breaths puff against her throat.

Ezreal's voice is quick and out of breath; he pulls back, still holding her arms tight. "Are you okay?!"

Lux blinks at him. In the distance she can still see the embers of her tower glowing.

He gives her a moment to answer, but when she fails to do so, he explains: "I saw the tower - the fire, I came as fast as I could. What happened? Did you - was he the only…?"

Lux shakes her head slowly. "There were others. I think I killed them all."

Ezreal only looks mildly perturbed. "Okay. Okay, good." Then his eyes drift down to the sword she is still dragging in one hand. He tilts his head, taking in the stab wound in the scout's back. When he looks back to Lux, it is with an arched eyebrow, as if this is a casual curiosity.

"It was my good luck charm," Lux tells him. After a pause, feeling emotionally numb, she adds, "The enchantment is gone. I'm sorry."

"I don't fucking care about that," Ezreal snaps. He huffs, and his hands drop down to hold her wrists. Softer, he tries again. "What now? The tower is gone. Do we… Do you go back to the kingdom?"

Lux is quiet. She looks at Ezreal's face, worry etched into every inch of it. It's in the crease of his brow and the shade of his eyes. In the dull glow of his cheeks, magic nearly tapped out, and in the flush of exertion on his cheeks from rushing here.

"I'll need to return soon," she admits. She does not want to face them.

Ezreal's hands slide down lower, gently nudging her until she lets go of the sword. He laces their fingers together. "You wouldn't make it there in one night. You should rest, first." He keeps one of her hands in his, then takes the sword in his other hand. "I'll take you somewhere safe."

Lux follows him, letting him guide her slowly across the dark fields. The adrenaline is wearing off. Her feet ache. All of her aches. The protection spell from the sword feels like a dream, now. Wispy like smoke in the air, translucent and fading with the wind.

Reality is setting in. Lux brings her free hand to her stomach again, squinting down as if she might see something new.

Ezreal's hand twitches in hers. She glances up, and he looks away quickly. Then immediately looks back, gaze flickering from her stomach to her face. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I've been better," Lux says.

Ezreal pauses again, turning back to her. He brushes her hair from her face, gently smoothing it down and drawing it over her shoulders to rest at her back. He thumbs at a smudge of ash on her cheek, unable to wipe it away. Looking over the rest of her, he lets out a quiet breath, as if the singed hem of her nightgown and the blood on her leg have hurt him, instead.

He leans forward until their foreheads touch; Lux grimaces. Both of them are sweaty and grimy, but she feels it a hundred times worse. She does not draw back.

He cups her cheek to kiss her. Then brings both hands, holding her face gently to kiss her again. "Want me to carry you?"

Lux lets a smile tug at her mouth. "You couldn't if you tried."

He frowns, vaguely offended. After rubbing at both her cheeks one more time, he lets go to take off his shoes and offer them to her.

"They might station me to another tower," Lux says, slipping into them without a word of thanks. She watches Ezreal's back as he turns away to pick the sword back up. "Or they might station me at a small town on the outskirts. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere safe - and secret."

Ezreal glances to her, questioning. He holds her hand and begins their walk again.

With her heart in her throat, Lux murmurs, "For nine months or so."

He does not stop walking, but his body goes rigid, shoulders tensing and his grip on her hand briefly too tight. Softly, he lets out an, "Ah."

She wonders if she should have smoothed over their last fight before telling him this. She does not feel like she has the energy. Lux is tired, mind swirling. Body aching. The horizon is so dark, without the lights of cities, and after so long in the sky, they are too low to the ground to see the sparkle on the faraway river-tops.

The stars above are piercing bright, needles stabbing down from the heavens to hurt her.

Lux's shoulders give a sudden, dramatic shudder. She laughs through a sob that tears itself out of her. Lux brings her free hand to rub away furious tears with her palm. Her fingers bury in her hair to push it out of her face.

"I'm going to be a terrible mother," Lux says. She does not know how she knows, but she is certain of it, and the heartache is visceral. It hollows her chest into a dark cavity.

Ezreal does not bother arguing. But wordlessly he stops one more time, turning to embrace her in the starry night. It is too tight, too desperate. There is longing in this, and not just for her. It only makes it worse.

She thinks about Ezreal's missing parents and how far he had gone to try to get his family back. She thinks about what it means to _be_ parents, and if it will fill the empty space in him. If he thinks that it will.

He doesn't look at her again. They both tilt their heads back, looking up at the sky as they walk.

"I love you," he says, like observing an objective truth. "And I'll do anything you ask."

It's a concept that flies in the face of the very foundation of their relationship until now. If she had the energy, she would laugh. She doesn't know how to answer, how to say the words back to him, and instead says, "You saved me."

She thinks about her life, compacted and crushed under the weight of shame. She thinks about magic draining out of her by force. 

Lux closes her eyes to the stars. Whispers: "I won't let her grow up behind those walls."

"Anything," Ezreal repeats.

**Author's Note:**

> I think Lux and Ezreal could be great parents if they had a kid when they were. Much older? Than like twenty??? But as they are now, I'm very attached to the idea of Lux not knowing how to express love, not even to her own child, and perpetuating her own cold, distant childhood thanks to still having so little control of her own life and hyper-focusing on her goals. I'm also very attached to the idea of Ezreal being a very loving and doting young father thanks to being desperate for family and having to pick up Lux's slack… While simultaneously remaining just as selfishly irresponsible as always - a dangerous, not-so-great combination…
> 
> This is a chance at living that future, not changing it for the better. I do think I intended to give much more closure to this, but sometimes the ending just won't let you pass it by. Well. The whole thing is just self indulgence, so I guess that's fine.
> 
> Anyway, when will MY boyfriend bring me a magic sword??? sigh……


End file.
